Why is it that television producers in this country have no idea of how to present Special Events?

By Trevor Connell Following channel seven’s appalling presentation of the Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies the ABC then lowered the bar even further with its coverage of the Paras Ceremonies. Both broadcasters treated the ceremonies as sporting events. While Seven mostly let the Olympics Opening story be told through imagery, their camera work was typical of a sports coverage – yes the close-ups of Nikki Webster and Djakapurra Munyarryun helped to tell the story, but close-ups of celebrities in the crowd? This is a typical ploy in sports coverage to cover the boring bits. And to zoom in on a fire breather as she reloads her mouth with kero while the real image was of the mass of fire-breathers involved. Seven’s coverage of the Closing Night Fireworks was no better. Shots through the structure of the Harbour Bridge, reflections of fireworks in city buildings and to top it off a close-up shot of the mortars being fired, when the action was 100 metres above. The first part of the big finale was of two 24” and two 16” shells being fired at once – Seven got a shot of just one of the 16” shells, through the Harbour Bridge. The second part of the finale was of all 28 firing positions, plus the Harbour Bridge and the city buildings all firing together to create the longest/biggest fireworks shot ever. A perfect shot to get from the blimp and Seven missed it completely. Then it was the ABC’s turn. Karen Richard’s Paralympics Opening Ceremony itself was extremely well done and the storyline was not hard to follow, however the ABC producer put a bunch of commentators on the air who not only suffered verbal diarrhoea, but treated the viewers as mentally retarded. The first section of the broadcast was totally marred by George Negus and Karen Tighe rabbiting on about what was obvious, and over Bryan Brown’s stadium announcements at that. Now, I enjoy Tony Squires in The Fat but here he was totally out of context, and the crosses to that pair of dickheads on the field, who sounded like they escaped from the Footy Show, was insulting. Insulting to us as viewers and insulting to the team who worked their arses off to bring us a colourful and moving spectacular, the coverage of which they were interrupting. Seven had already proved that sports commentators make lousy event commentators (with the possible exception of Roy and HG) and then the ABC made us suffer even more. Karen Tighe’s commitment to, and knowledge of, Paralympic sport was perfect to commentate on the teams as they entered the stadium and of course George Negus, the former Foreign Correspondent anchor, knew all the details of the countries they came from. And that is where their commentary should have stayed – commenting on the athletes. Leave the storytelling to the performance itself. Having said all that though, full credit must go to Global Television who supplied the vision for the Paras ceremonies. The vision was excellent, with close-ups where necessary and plenty of wide shots to gather in the immensity of the arena, and far better than Seven’s efforts. I’m sure many people would like a memento of the ceremonies. So, SOCOG, can you please get hold of the tapes from both broadcasters and do a remix for the souvenir video and DVD. Get Ric Birch to re-edit the Olympic Ceremonies and Karen Richards to do the Paras, and then release the result as the “Directors Cut”.

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